The present invention relates to a method and an apparatus for supporting interactions between a user and peers and, more particularly, but not exclusively, to a method and an apparatus for supporting services and wireless interactions between a user and peers and enhancing the user experience.
In the modern world, many people use social communities on the Internet to interact with people and to meet friends and acquaintances for a variety of reasons such as romantic involvement, friendship, career advancement, commercial benefit, and non-profit and political benefit.
In some cases, interacting through social communities reduces the risks of rejection, deception, and even physical danger that exist when interacting with strangers. Such risks are especially acute when it comes to meeting people for dating. One way to meet people for dating is for one individual to approach another individual in a public forum, such as a bar, a park, etc. In an archetypical case, a man might approach a woman to strike up a conversation. Two problems immediately arise. First, the woman is likely to reject the man for any number of reasons such as an involvement in another relationship or physical or mental incompatibility. Second, without any additional information about the approaching man, the woman has little context for deciding if she should put effort into the match as does not know his background, occupation, etc. While the previous example describes a specific, if quite common, form of meeting people, many of the same risks also occur in other social interactions where the goal is not dating. When looking for a new friend, developing a business relationship or simply seeking an activity partner, people are adverse to the risks of rejection and incompatibility.
A social community, such as a dating community, allows an individual, such as a community member, to share personal information and pictures with other individuals. In such a manner, individuals can base their decision whether to approach the community member on personal information and pictures, thereby to avoid some of the undesired situations. In a typical on-line social community service, individuals register with the service and provide extensive background information about them.
For example, U.S. Pat. No. 5,963,951, issued on Oct. 5, 1999, discloses a computerized on-line dating service for searching and matching people. The on-line dating service comprises a database of subscriber information that includes preferences of subscribers to the service such as a gender preference, a geographic location preference, an age preference, appearance preferences, religious belief preferences, educational level preferences, and a relationship goal preference. The database is repeatedly searched for records matching the personal preferences of the user by at least a percentage match parameter value.
Another example for allowing communication between users is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 6,363,427, issued on Mar. 26, 2002 that describes a method of electronic message exchange. The method comprises reading other identifications of other personal data areas on other servers, reading from the other personal data areas other message identifications identifying other messages stored on the other personal data areas, and merging the other message identifications into a list of messages.
Though the aforementioned systems allow members to receive personal information about other members, the members cannot get the real sense of another's personality without speaking to or seeing him or her in person. Moreover, the social communities' services are usually based on rote screening of criteria, behind walls of anonymity. They do not provide any features for community, collaboration, or referral.
The aforementioned online social communities are usually detached from the daily life of the members. The online social communities do not support interacting with peers in public forums. Such interactions are more exciting and vivid as they occur in person. Though the aforementioned methods provide an alternative to the traditional interactions among peers, some may think that they are not exciting and vivid experience as the traditional interactions that allow people to get to know one another in person. Moreover, the aforementioned services do not assist the members in forming relationships with people who are members or people they meet in the middle of the day.
There is thus a widely recognized need for, and it would be highly advantageous to have, a system and a method for interacting with peers and sharing content therewith devoid of the above limitations.